If I had money, I'd be buying games, not fighting a losing battle against undercutters.
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It's not really a loosing battle at all... I started off with 4 regular Skyrim cards and made less than a dollar off them, bought more cards with the profit, sold them, bought and sold again etc. and eventually made over $50 to spend on games. You only loose the battle if you suck at trading.
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And just how much time and effort was put into this endeavour? -_-
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So you went from <$1 to >$50 in 5 or 6 hours? And the act of buying cards, then going to your inventory to sell them (after checking the price on the market first, of course), buying new cards etc all took mere seconds rather than a minute each time?
I call bullshit.
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It doesn't take that long at all once you get good at it, you just keep lots of tabs open in your browser (using the steam program itself would be way to inefficient) and I didn't need to continuously recheck the price in the market because I mainly traded Skyrim cards, you check the lowest price that currently has more than twenty listings, buy any card that sells for more than 4 cents below the identified price, and sell all the cards you buy for one cent below that identified price. Spamming refresh isn't hard or time consuming, the feature was new back then and I found undercutting to be far more prevalent in the first two or three weeks that popular games had the trading card feature so making a new purchase every 10 seconds is a very achievable average.
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Fair enough. If we're talking about the early days of the cards' implementation, ok. Still, we're talking, then, about 3 cents profit every 10 seconds or so (buy a card, sell it again)? That means 100 transactions (1000 seconds) to get 3 dollars' profit, right about. you'd need that times close to 17 to get 50 dollars out of it. 17 x 1000 = 17000 seconds = about 283.5 minutes, which is about 5 hours. And this is assuming this is all you'd be doing.. Of course these are all rough estimates but still, you'd need a bunch of time, and around 1700 transactions to get from <$1 to >$50 assuming an average of 3 cents' profit per sale. However you look at it, you put a lot of work into this. Unless you lucked out on a few sales and got a dollars' or more worth of profit here and there. Which I can also totally believe, having seen what went on with the market in the trading cards' early days. But going from 1 to 50 purely through sales resulting in a couple of cents' profit each time? Whole lotta work you put in, there.
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You're on the right track with your maths (though the bit about 1700 transactions is wrong, I needed 1700 cards based on the averages you used but each card must be both bought and sold resulting in two transactions per card) and you touched on the key point near the end, however it's not a case of lucking out an making big profits off a few cards, the average was consistently actually almost 5 cents according to my market history. That bit I said about making a new purchase every 10 seconds on average would be achievable (there certainly were times cheap cards were popping up more than once a second). So as it was it took all of 2172 market transactions (that's 1086 cards bought and sold again) and personally I don't regard it as having been a lot of work since it was exclusively time spent between conterstrike rounds, time which is usually otherwise dedicated to a mixture of chatting to friends, choosing new music, reading articles, researching random things I am interested in etc., not what I would call valuable time. It was just a case of sitting back, spamming f5 and clicking links. Unfortunately the market has since matured and it's just not that easy to make big profits anymore because people sell somewhat more sensibly.
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That's what happens when kids and people with no financial sense have access to penny markets.
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I know of a few people who do this on purpose TO make the price on a card crash, so they can they buy up all the cheaper cards being put up by people responding to the stark undercutting price, then re-sell them after the price has stabilised because they bought up all the cheap ones put up. It's artificially manipulating the price on a card. Shitty practise if you ask me, which can easily backfire on you, too.
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example: I get a Foil trading card, put it for sale on the market for $3 (at the time, cheapest of that particular card)
a few minutes later, someone else posts the same card for $1.23, then someone else posts another for 60 cents, then someone else posts two or three for 43 cents.
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What you need to do is schmooze with some higher ups at Steam. Have a party or two and invite Gaben and his cronies along. Shake their hands, give them good food, good booze and good times.
Then, when you inevitably go bankrupt as a result of your own inability to compete in the marketplace, Steam will give you a HUGE bail-out windfall allowing you to buy all the games you like! Steam will, of course, recuperate these funds from other users by charging $1 more per game - but will insist it is everyone else's fault for being reckless with not buying your Steam cards...
...Only then will I respect the Steam Market as a TRUE economy!
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I've been mistaken for a distributor before...
Just because I was wearing ugly sun glasses and a ratty old jacket.
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Haha. Once I was wandering around NYC after not sleeping for 2 or 3 days and someone tried to sell me summa dat nose candy.
It didn't help that I was kind of underweight too then.
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Yeah, I actually saw one guy undercutting half my cards including one of the foils.
Found out he has an account here, though seems to be banned, or at least a decently long suspension. Further proof undercutters are scum.
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Yeah I noticed a few have accounts on here as well.
It's just annoying, cuz some of us actually do see the point in selling cards, and use the money to save up and buy games for it. Atleast that's what I do. Already got a few games out of it. But if others keep undercutting, it is just gonna take a lot longer to save up.
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Nothing wrong with matching other sellers, and I'll only undercut myself by 1 cent, and that is only if there are already pages at the previous low. I don't see any reason to bomb the value of a card.
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I see plenty of reason to undercut by a fair margin : Higher chance of selling.
Why would you hold any individual responsible for the constant flux of the living beast that is a market?
Purchasing the low-priced card and then selling it for a profit is an option.
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I've already explained the two reasons I won't do that.
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I know you did. I read them. I too would rather spend money on buying games than on investing in the trading card thing. That doesn't mean it isn't a viable option if you're into that kind of thing.
You're annoyed about somebody partaking in an active market, in a valid way. I can see how it might bug you. Just like how the slowly increasing 'average purchase' price of a bundle might annoy other people. You don't have to participate, but you can't really expect the flow of an entire system to follow the whims of someone's frustration. It's annoying but that's the way it is, and there isn't really anything wrong with it (at least at my first glance).
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I had the same problem a while back. If they would undercut me by a substantial amount I would undercut them by a penny. After they undercut me again I return it to my original price.
Of course you could buy it and repost it for a higher price but theres too many unknowns. I did this in WoW during TBC days with gems and made a shit ton of gold but I had the ability to buy every single gem on the market. Knowing the top guilds personally and their raiding schedule helped too.
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Buying is out, since I have no money, and I have more interest in getting money to buy what Tomb Raider games I can during the sale anyway.
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i had the same problem. got a foil last week, and listed it on the market for $3 (mine was the only one listed).
i gave up and sold it for around 60 cents a few hours after everyone else with that card started listing them for that price.
i think people undercut because they got their card for free (kinda), so it's not really worth anything to them. if they can get a few cents from it, they're happy
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Indeed. I listed one of my cards at 2.72 yesterday, then someone comes in 10 minutes later and chucks it in for 1.50.
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Only temporarily. Unless the supply has suddenly increased, the price will go back up eventually.
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So much whine in here. If you all care about pennypinching so much then maybe you should be spending your time looking for a real job... I thought Steam was about playing games and having fun, not trying to eke out every bit of money from fellow gamers >.>
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Job market sucks around here. :(
When even KFC gets 1000 applications, you know things are messed up.
So I'm trying to sell these damn things just so I can get stuff on Steam.
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you are crazy... penny pinching is the way you can boost your savings and eventually retire early, or have enough money later on in-case of a huge emergency.
having a well paying job, or a better job wont help you if you just willy-nilly blow it all on whatever you feel like. That is how celebrities that make oodles of money go bankrupt...
granted steam cards isn't much, but in the grand scheme of things, if you make 200 dollars a year off of it (the maximum before you have to start paying taxes on it if you live in the US) That is going to add up to a lot in savings + interest from growth investments.
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ye of short reaching sight. the average middle-lower class income person has about 4000 dollars in savings or investments a year.
200 dollars on top of that is a hefty sum. and 200 dollars at a market investment return of 9-10%(a very low % compared to what kind of return you could get) is 20 dollars If you are continually investing that 200 dollars every year, you would be exponentially increasing your income. in 10 years, the 200 dollars each year + the accumulated interest would be netting you 400 dollars a year, simply from the 200 dollars of savings in steam games/yr.
Penny pinching in many forms will enable you to save huge amounts of money (wether it be from clipping coupons and turning off lights when your not using them) so long as you keep investing your savings and not blowing them away.
you sir are wrong.
EDIT:
If you want to factor in inflation (which is pretty high and is essentially making all money worth less in your pocket, in your appliances, and in your investments) that is about 4-5% on average according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics you will still be making a couple hundred dollars a year compounding simply from penny pinching a couple games every year.
as I have said before, every little bit adds up, and while simply penny pinching on games wont let you retire, it is part of the grand scheme of your savings and doing so will, in 30-40 years, net you huge gains.
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I see quite enough, thank you.
Also, you're wasting your breath; in order to achieve a 10% annual gain you would have to have a well diversified portfolio, and a bit of luck. I'm sure you know nothing about being poor with your outlandish estimates of middle lower-class expendable/savable income estimate and even less about investing money with your expectations for small investments.
In regards to that paragraph about inflation and earning a couple hundred a year, refer to my heading.
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Hundreds of thousands of dollars for half an hour effort a month? i find that incredibly hard to believe. more like a couple thousand over 10 years if you get paid a respectable amount above minimum wage i.e. 20-25/hr... this also implies that you CAN work in that time. this is probably only the case if you are self employed. Penny pinching is not a replacement for work, it is just a way to pad your savings.
Clipping coupons can save you hundreds of dollars every time you go shopping. EVERY time. that would take someone working at 25$ an hour 8 hours to make up, clipping coupons takes no more than two hours at maximum and sometimes that is all you need to do for a MONTH.
as far as your investments statement, I said growth investments, which are defined as: maximizing investment capital gains. this is clearly not the route for everyone, many people go with less risky investments as well to counter balance this but that just means they should save more whenever it is viable/possible. many mutual funds make around 9-10% a year. but yes you do need a moderately diverse portfolio, no matter WHAT investment you make. If you put all of your eggs in one basket don't come crying to me when that one thing fails miserably and you lose all of your savings. Personally I make around my 9-10% statement through all of my investments and I am not a financial genius.
Income in the american lower middle class ranges from $32,500 to $60,000. the average lower-middle class american invests 8-10% of their income into their savings and investments for retirement. This means that the average lower-middle class american invests $2600 - $6000 I believe my estimate of $4000/yer lies smack dab in the middle of this range pretty much. get off your high horse and do some research.
wasn't trying to sound like a dick, hope I didn't. Arguing isn't easy for me. ^^
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You are incredibly off on the time it takes to make money in TF2, the amount of money spent monthly on household items, and the availability of "coupons" (that barely warranted a response)
Also, middle-lower, and lower-middle are two different things which changes the conversation dramatically.
I'm not on a high horse. Saving money is a good thing. I just feel your estimates are unrealistic.
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I thought we were talking about just selling trading cards! :D
The middle lower class thing I said was a mistake on my part, I had meant lower-middle class sorry!
If it were middle lower class however, wouldn't it be more in the favor of my argument though? the extra money that could be saved would be a larger chunk of the total pie.
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its because the steam market hasn't yet gotten sick of competing and decided to form an illegal cartel where the top sellers all get together to set their prices, and then have the government(gabin) step in and interfere to make the prices rise like that. only a matter of time before somebody convinces them to step in though, higher prices mean steam's cut is higher too.
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Not sure how 5 years ago 3ref for TF2 key is cheaper than todays 5ref for key...
SCM is not opposite of rl capitalism - it's more like it's showing how capitalism work in so-called "perfect world". In real world you have limited number of producers and sellers, which means there are monopolies and oligopolies that decide about prices, as opposed to supply and demand law.
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What the hell is the usual price for a foil? Last I checked ( and I think my first foil was the sword-sister card from M&B Warband for about 60 cents USD )they cost less than a dollar.
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its just the way the market works sometimes you are trying to sell for less to make a quick buck. I have been flipping items over the last few days and generally it goes favorably in my way, but every once in a while after I've posted with a new low price and I have to hope I can break even or, in the case of a Monaco foil I bought a couple months back and eventually sold for about $2.50 less, just take the loss and move on.
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Got two foils yesterday, trying to sell them, people pop up and undercut by a dollar or two for no reason. How am I going to get more of the Tomb Raider games if I need to match them? >:(
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